Question

nothing but trouble with home internet

H
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Hi, all. I started out a few months ago with a Nokia gateway and it worked well until it didn’t. It started randomly dropping out throughout the day and night. I had it replaced with another Nokia, which has the same problem.

I insisted on getting an Arcadyan unit which arrived list night and is much, much worse. It drops every few minutes. I reseated the SIM, did a factory reset, etc. It shows 4/5 bars, says 5G, then it will say no internet. It also sometimes gives a WAN 005 or WAN 002 error.

T-Mobile has been totally useless. Promising everything under the sun but has not been able to fix this. Has anyone had any success with home internet? Anyone have these same problems but have had success in fixing them? I live very close to a tower and just up the block from me you can get well over 600mbps upload. The problem isn’t the signal.

Thanks.

14 replies

iTinkeralot
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If you are getting upwards of 600 Mbs then you are probably looking at a n41 5G mid band signal. That would be nice to have work. It might take a little effort but maybe a bit more reliable signal lock can be made. Of course it all depends upon how much work is being done on the tower equipment and the T-Mobile deployment. If the tower equipment is not getting to a final deployment it might stay a bit flakey for a bit and be frustrating. On the other hand you might get lucky and end up as another user I worked with from the San Diego area that gave it a consistent effort and ended up with a solid solution and saved money. It may take a little time and effort but it might be possible to get it to work. 

G

i hope this is helpful but something i did yesterday seemed to really help today.  backstory is ive had TMHI since august, it went bad in january and has been bad ever since.  i watch the nater tator and peter carcione you tube channels which have been very helpful in trying dif things...def check them out.  i have the nokia consistent 4 bars on top, bought a fan to cool it, wifi is off, separate dynalink router via ethernet w maybe 5 devices, roku via ethernet others via wifi.

i downloaded the opensignal app on my phone, and opened the arrow button bottom right which opens this follow the arrow tool, but click the cell towers button.  this opened an apparent map of all the tmobile towers in my area and showed which tower my phone was using.  if you click on a tower point it will tell you the CellID and LAC which apparently is the Location Area Code which is assigned to a group of towers in a small area. i noticed that 4 to 5 of the closest to my house all had the same LAC.

on the phone w support yest to tell them how horrible TMHI was, i asked for the number of the tower that my gateway was trying to connect to mainly because imho my phone and gateway seemed to be using two totally different towers, w my phone getting 300 up on 5g and nada in the gateway. none of any number he gave me was remotely close to any of the cellids i was seeing in opensignal or even the cellmapper app.  but when i told him to please check the LAC after giving him that #, he seemed surprised that my gateway was not using a tower in that LAC group.  He locked it on the # i gave, said it would take up to 24 hours to reset and see how it goes.  after about two hours i decided to do a hard reset and bam.  my 2.4 and 5g are now consistently 4 bars when looking at gateway through browser.  5g has never been more than 2 bars since ive had it.  only 24 hours in but man what a difference.  fingers crossed.

so try this:

download opensignal, click on arrow, click on cell towers button, and click on each tower around your house and note the LAC #s.  hopefully they are all the same or pick one that is closest to the side of your house where your gateway sits.

call help line and insist they check and lock your gateway onto this LAC #

hard reset soon thereafter just to be sure.

i hope it helps some.  ive read and experienced the same difficulties these last months but do not want to go back to the dark side!

good luck!

 

iTinkeralot
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

I tried OpenSignal a little over a year ago. Then it did not appear to support 5G or did not do it very well. The cellphone signal lock and the home internet router don’s seem to always behave the same. Everyone has a different situation so I’m not complaining. Your location may have multiple towers and cellular radios within reach but here I have one option which is 5.3 miles to the north. Not hard to find really as I have line of sight and no obstructions. I can see pretty much the entire tower and I was pretty easily able to confirm 100% that it was the signal source for 4G LTE and 5G NR signals. A support call to T-Mobile and their confirmation of my speculation pretty much confirmed what was needed. The OpenSignal application on my iPhone 12 Pro never seemed to work that well. Again everyone has a different situation when it comes to cellular connectivity. I tried OpenSignal again today but so far the tower locator just is not working. When I put my iPhone into “Field Test Mode” it will report the cellular information for the signaling so that works enough for me.

I know I can drive closer to the T-Mobile 5G tower in the nearest town and get a 5G UC signal on my phone but it fails to provide proper data services. I have seen multiple conversations that users have posted with different/same 5G capable phones and seen others have the same issues with the T-Mobile 5G UC signals on phones. I think T-Mobile has a bit more work to do on the mid-band when it comes to delivery of data to cell phones. 

My experience with the “issues” when the signaling went unpredictable were most successful when I made the call to T-Mobile support and asked the right questions. Some calls were more successful than others but I kept after it and got results. I have used multiple tools and different approaches to working through the problems. The cellular home internet solution takes a bit more work and focus than a hard connection but that is the nature of over the air signaling. With the rise in costs associated with building out physical infrastructure for delivery in rural areas the cellular or satellite solutions will be the primary go forward solutions. At the technologies mature it will improve. 

N

I downloaded the Opensignal app and I faced it towards a different tower than what the T mobile app was suggesting but I cannot find a LAC #, where can I find that? 

 

iTinkeralot
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Nicole S, 

Based upon the post “geodork” made I would guess if/when the use of the tower locater works then the application will report the “LAC #”. I have not seen the OpenSource application be successful in finding any towers here and I can point my phone at two towers and it fails to locate either. I turned off the WIFI on  my phone to rule out influence via the WIFI signal and it made no difference. Some people find OpenSignal helpful but it is a free application so hard to complain. 

If you have an iPhone:

Field Test Mode >  dial *3001#12345#*

This will report the cellular signal your phone uses. It is perfectly safe and native to the iPhone. There are network scanner applications for Android you can try. Keep in mind the tower your phone connects to may not be the same as the home internet router. 

I used cellmapper.net when on my MAC and found it to be much more helpful. Cellmapper.net is one of the better browser tools, is free, and has around 80% accuracy. User updates to the database dictate how much information is there. You can search for 4G LTE and 5G NR signals. If you have the Nokia router and can see the PCI, physical cell identifiers then you can use that to find the tower. 

R

Hi henrod, yes I am having that same problem. I have spoken to T-Mobile two different times and they have sent me a second gateway and I have had the same problem with both. I agree it’s not the signal it’s that it continuously drops out throughout the day. Yesterday I called and was on the phone for half an hour with a representative. It was fine at end of call then he called me back an hour later to see how it was . It was still good then but within about 15 minutes it started dropping in and out again. Very frustrating. I’m thinking about going back to Att internet I had before.

H
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unfortunately, open signal doesn’t show any cell towers! I’m still going back and forth with “customer service” on twitter. “We’re checking with engineering, waiting for them to get back to us”

 

ugh

F
Badge

i hope this is helpful but something i did yesterday seemed to really help today.  backstory is ive had TMHI since august, it went bad in january and has been bad ever since.  i watch the nater tator and peter carcione you tube channels which have been very helpful in trying dif things...def check them out.  i have the nokia consistent 4 bars on top, bought a fan to cool it, wifi is off, separate dynalink router via ethernet w maybe 5 devices, roku via ethernet others via wifi.

i downloaded the opensignal app on my phone, and opened the arrow button bottom right which opens this follow the arrow tool, but click the cell towers button.  this opened an apparent map of all the tmobile towers in my area and showed which tower my phone was using.  if you click on a tower point it will tell you the CellID and LAC which apparently is the Location Area Code which is assigned to a group of towers in a small area. i noticed that 4 to 5 of the closest to my house all had the same LAC.

on the phone w support yest to tell them how horrible TMHI was, i asked for the number of the tower that my gateway was trying to connect to mainly because imho my phone and gateway seemed to be using two totally different towers, w my phone getting 300 up on 5g and nada in the gateway. none of any number he gave me was remotely close to any of the cellids i was seeing in opensignal or even the cellmapper app.  but when i told him to please check the LAC after giving him that #, he seemed surprised that my gateway was not using a tower in that LAC group.  He locked it on the # i gave, said it would take up to 24 hours to reset and see how it goes.  after about two hours i decided to do a hard reset and bam.  my 2.4 and 5g are now consistently 4 bars when looking at gateway through browser.  5g has never been more than 2 bars since ive had it.  only 24 hours in but man what a difference.  fingers crossed.

so try this:

download opensignal, click on arrow, click on cell towers button, and click on each tower around your house and note the LAC #s.  hopefully they are all the same or pick one that is closest to the side of your house where your gateway sits.

call help line and insist they check and lock your gateway onto this LAC #

hard reset soon thereafter just to be sure.

i hope it helps some.  ive read and experienced the same difficulties these last months but do not want to go back to the dark side!

good luck!

 

I also have had nothing but trouble with my home internet so I tried this. However, when I called to ask them to find out what LAC # I am connected to and lock me into the one nearest me he had no idea what I was talking about. This is pretty typical of every single time I have called about my home internet. Representatives are all very nice but not helpful in the least. About a week and a half to two weeks ago I called and insisted I speak with a manager. She also could not help me but she did give me an $80 credit towards my bill since I have not been able to use my internet service at all since December. She really should have given me $150 since it's $50 a month and this is the end of March and I've had 3 months of no service but I accepted the $80 credit for now I can guarantee you if I still have no service next month I'm going to demand that they give me my money back for this month as well. It's really frustrating because once in awhile my internet service will spike up and I get 200 megabits per second but that's typically about 2:00 a.m. or some other ungodly hour when I am not really trying to get on the internet. When I really need it it drops down to between 2 and 4 megabits per second.

H
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After spending days on Twitter DMs with customer service, i’m returning the Arcadian and keeping the Nokia. They were able to point both gateways at the closer tower to my house, but it didn’t make much of a difference. The Arcadian is consistently less than half the speed of the Nokia. It’s only broken 100 Mbps and the Nokia is routinely over 200. It was a ridiculous waste of time and I’m still very disillusioned about T-Mobile. I’m keeping it for now, but if it messes up again I’m going right back to optimum. It’s hard to negotiate with optimum in my town because there is no Verizon FiOS.

F
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Honestly I would be thrilled if I got 100 Mbps! As of just a couple of minutes ago my top speed was 26 Mbps. Since this is usable I will not be calling them again today. For now, it is functioning.

G
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I worked for TMo and took home the internet gateway to test it. Garbage. I am on top of a cell tower and can only get 2 small bars on the gateway. It stalls playing back video on TV. It’s useless. I am very sad there are no alternatives to my internet situation. 

F
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Honestly I would be thrilled if I got 100 Mbps! As of just a couple of minutes ago my top speed was 26 Mbps. Since this is usable I will not be calling them again today. For now, it is functioning.

Just figure it out that I can actually look up what LAC# I am connected to with my home internet. It shows up in the home internet app under "More" then go to "Advanced cellular metrics" in there it shows up at the very bottom but it is called TAC there. I just know it's the same thing since it is the same number that I can see in the opensignal site. 

F
Badge

Honestly I would be thrilled if I got 100 Mbps! As of just a couple of minutes ago my top speed was 26 Mbps. Since this is usable I will not be calling them again today. For now, it is functioning.

Just figure it out that I can actually look up what LAC# I am connected to with my home internet. It shows up in the home internet app under "More" then go to "Advanced cellular metrics" in there it shows up at the very bottom but it is called TAC there. I just know it's the same thing since it is the same number that I can see in the opensignal site. 

- figured out not figure it out

C
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I have 25 towers within a 25 mile radius having 1 of 2 different LAC#. No matter where I am inside or out I can never get more than 2 bars on sagmecon device and the rare time I get more than 2 bars I have absolutely no service at all. Very frustrating, I can only make calls if the wifi goes down if I stand outside. Is it worth the call for them to lick me in on a different tower to see if the service is better? Any help is appreciated. 

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